Abstract
Psychopathy, characterized by symptoms of emotional detachment, reduced guilt and empathy and a callous disregard for the rights and welfare of others, is a strong risk factor for immoral behavior. Psychopathy is also marked by abnormal attention with downstream consequences on emotional processing. To examine the influence of task demands on moral evaluation in psychopathy, functional magnetic resonance imaging was used to measure neural response and functional connectivity in 88 incarcerated male subjects (28 with Psychopathy Checklist Revised (PCL-R) scores ⩾30) while they viewed dynamic visual stimuli depicting interpersonal harm and interpersonal assistance in two contexts, implicit and explicit. During the implicit task, high psychopathy was associated with reduced activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and caudate when viewing harmful compared with helpful social interactions. Functional connectivity seeded in the right amygdala and right temporoparietal junction revealed decreased coupling with the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), anterior insula, striatum and ventromedial prefrontal cortex. In the explicit task, higher trait psychopathy predicted reduced signal change in ACC and amygdala, accompanied by decreased functional connectivity to temporal pole, insula and striatum, but increased connectivity with dorsal ACC. Psychopathy did not influence behavioral performance in either task, despite differences in neural activity and functional connectivity. These findings provide the first direct evidence that hemodynamic activity and neural coupling within the salience network are disrupted in psychopathy, and that the effects of psychopathy on moral evaluation are influenced by attentional demands.
Highlights
Some studies reported that reduced functional connectivity seeded in both right amygdala individuals with psychopathy fail to attach the appropriate significance to the distress cues of others, and show decreased hemodynamic response in the anterior insula (aINS) and amygdala.[53]
By utilizing ecologically valid depictions of interpersonal harm versus interpersonal assistance, when the harm was and was not task-relevant, the results of this study provide the first direct evidence for the influence of task demands on neural processing of moral information in psychopathy
Highand low-psychopathy groups did not differ in their behavioral performance on these tasks, there were several striking differences in the neural networks recruited as well as in functional connectivity, even after controlling for age and Intelligence quotient (IQ)
Summary
Psychopathy is a personality disorder associated with a constellation of traits including a lack of guilt and empathy, narcissism, superficial charm, dishonesty, reckless risk-taking and impulsive antisocial behavior.[1,2] Dysfunctional emotional processing is a characteristic feature of psychopathy and is accompanied by atypical anatomical and functional connectivity between the amygdala and ventromedial prefrontal cortex,[3,4] as well as anomalous neural activity in regions such as anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), anterior insula (aINS) and the amygdala in response to affective stimuli.[3,5,6,7,8,9,10] Given the importance of emotion and affective arousal in moral reasoning[11,12] ( some debate this13,14), and work showing that the interpersonal/affective characteristics of psychopathy facilitate immoral behavior,[1] studying individuals with various levels of psychopathy constitutes an important test case for understanding the neural mechanisms underpinning moral cognition and decision-making. Some studies reported that reduced functional connectivity seeded in both right amygdala individuals with psychopathy fail to attach the appropriate significance to the distress cues of others, and show decreased hemodynamic response in the aINS and amygdala.[53] in and right TPJ to widespread cortical and limbic areas, especially to core nodes of the salience network (that is, dACC, aINS).[68] During the explicit moral evaluation task, because psychopaths lack an other contexts psychopathy has been linked to greater activity in intuitive aversive response to harm, they are expected to rely these regions.[6,54] One appealing resolution to this apparent more on cognitive (controlled) computations, as evidenced by contradiction proposes that selective attention is abnormal in increased recruitment at the whole-brain level of prefrontal psychopathy.[55] In non-moral contexts, such as fear-potentiated regions, rather than regions that support rapid processing, such startle, both behavioral and amygdala activity differences as parahippocampus, amygdala, ventral ACC and brainstem. During the explicit task, PCL-R scores predicted reduced functional connectivity to several nodes of the salience network (bilateral striatum, brainstem, right dorsal aINS and right superior temporal pole) and cognitive control network (left superior parietal lobule, right dlPFC and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex). Psychopathy was associated with reduced rTPJ coupling with right dlPFC and superior parietal cortex
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
